Commercial optical communication systems employ highly dynamic and configurable electronic switching that runs on top of largely static high capacity optical systems. This architecture has worked well in the past since typical data traffic flows were on the order of 10-100 Mb/s while the capacity of an optical channel is 10-100 Gb/s. As traffic demand increased, the size of application traffic flows increased and the way that the Internet is used has changed. Data flows in the Gigabit/second range are more frequently used or desirable. Moreover, trends such as big data, which involves manipulating, backing up and transporting large sets of data, networks on demand, enterprise data centers and storage networks, video on demand, and scientific computing all break the conventional static optical network model. Accordingly, there is a growing need for dynamic and highly configurable capabilities in the optical layer of metro and other networks. Furthermore, events such as natural disasters and electrical power outages create dramatic changes that also call for an adaptive and thereby resilient optical network infrastructure that would mitigate their impacts.